Clothing of Sami People
Explores the traditional clothing and outfits of Sami peoples.
Sami Gakti
The outfits of Sami people varied by time and place, but most followed the basic pattern of the gakti. The gakti is a loose tunic, belted around the middle and worn by both men and women. Women's gakti are longer than those of men, resembling a dress. They were originally made from reindeer hides and furs; the more uniform the coat's color, the more valuable it was. Over time, however, the fur was replaced by cotton, wool, felt, silk, and velvet.[1]
Beneath the gakti, men and women wear leggings, once made of hide and lined with reindeer fur. Recent styles have incorporated high collars embroidered with metallic threads and covered in silver ornaments. Most gakti are brightly colored in blues, reds, and yellows. Over this, women may drape a fringed silk shawl held in place by ornate brooches.[2]
In modern times, Sami people typically only wear furs while herding in winter. Some choose to wear traditional outfits as day-to-day wear, while others keep gakti for special occasions. Others, especially those who have left Sápmi, wear exclusively Western fashions.[1]
Sami Hats
Along the Arctic Circle, hats protected their wearer from the cold and also identified where a person was from. Men and women wore a variety of headwear, ranging from flat caps to more elaborate, pointed hats. For women, the Norwegian ladjo was the largest and perhaps most well known. Each ladjo is topped by a curved wooden horn covered with embroidered fabric.[3]
Men wore high, square hats that extended into points made of blue, red, and yellow cloth stuffed with eiderdown. Four-wind hats, as they were called, represented the four corners of the world. Fearing demonic influence, Christian policies sometimes banned both styles of hats. They are now seeing a resurgence in popularity with the Sami cultural revival.[4][5]
Sami Footwear
A traditional Sami shoe is made from reindeer hide. Families lined them with dried grasses in the winter to protect their feet from frostbite. The characteristic curling toe seen on most boots and shoes is a practical feature. During long journeys, Sami people hooked the toes into their skis to ensure they didn't come loose.[6]
Bibliography
Simone Abram, Postcolonial Perspectives on the European High North: Unscrambling the Arctic, ed. Graham Huggan and Lars Jensen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 76.
Emilie Demant Hatt, With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman Among the Sami, 1907-1908, ed. Barbara Sjoholm (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 30.
W. Thalbitzer, "The Enigma of the Woman's Horned Cap" in Continuity and Discontinuity in Arctic Cultures: Essays in Honour of Gerti Nooter, Curator at the National Museum of Ethnology, 1970-1990, eds. G. W. Nooter and Cunera Buijs (Leiden, The Netherlands: Centre of Non-Western Studies, 1993).
Rudolph Reyser, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, and Heidi Bruce, "Fourth World Theory and Methods of Inquiry" in Handbook of Research on Theoretical Perspectives on Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Developing Countries, ed. Patrick Ngulube (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2017), 50-84.
Juha Pentikäinen, Shamanism and Northern Ecology (Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 1996), 8.
Lars Ivar Hansen, Hunters in Transition: An Outline of Early Sámi History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 107-118.
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